North gate

“ Something of the kind was present at Winchester. The whole stream of traffic which passed out from the capital to the rest of England went through the lane of the moneylenders, and we may say with certitude that the north gate, the limit of that lane, was the starting-point of the Old Road.
The north gate has now disappeared. It lay just south of the grounds now known as North-Gate House. The deflection of the street is comparatively modern ”

“ The principal street runs nearly northwest and southeast. There is a north gate at one end of it, and a south gate at the other, but no remnant of the ancient town gates is left. The Kennet and Avon Canal, built in 1794-1805, skirts the northern side of the town, and thereafter descends the western slope, passing through twenty-seven magnificent locks, within a distance of about two miles,—one of the longest consecutive ranges of locks in England. ”

“ On reaching the north-gate of the city, there appeared to be no preparations made for resistance, and the only two guns which could be seen mounted at the gateway looked harmless enough. In fact, there was no one at the gate; and two or three of our men, having contrived to get over the wall, soon opened the gate, and admitted the rest. It was now discovered that the place had been abandoned by the authorities the previous evening. The people generally shewed no ill feeling towards the foreigners, but rather an inclination to conciliate their good offices. ”

“ The approach leading through the North-west gate is extremely steep and difficult, causing to the men and baggage animals great fatigue. The remnant of an ancient wall affords no defence whatever; and the large and ruinous arched passages serve but to give some evidence of its former importance. The public buildings are numerous. ”

“ The village itself bears nothing on its face telling of great events, and is of a placid dulness, a character shared by Escrick and Deighton, on the way to York; the road itself gradually becoming an abomination of desolate fields until the village of Gate Fulford is reached. The Great North Road is a businesslike highway. It goes as direct as may be to its destination, and gets there quite regardless of scenery or interest to right or left. ”

“ Each of these gates is defended by an additional work. A sort of hornwork is thrown out in advance, enclosed within a wall with towers, and with a second gate placed obliquely to the first, to allow the approach to be commanded. The north, called the King’s Gate, is tolerably perfect. The southern outwork is nearly destroyed. It had two gates, one to the south, connected with which was the tower containing a well, and one to the east, called King Arthur’s Gate, close to which was the Armourer’s Tower, and near this was Earl Godwin’s Postern. ”

“ The west wall is 1601 feet long; the east wall, 1530 feet. The northern boundary for 350 feet is formed by a scarp of rock 30 feet high, projecting at the north-west of the Haram.
The modern gateways giving entrance into the interior are eleven in number: three on the north and eight on the west. Of the ancient gateways there were two on the south, now called the Double and Triple Gates; while east of the latter is the mediæval entrance, known as the Single Gate, beneath which Colonel Warren discovered a passage. On the east wall is the Golden Gate, now closed ”

“ The north-east gate (Porta Principalis Dextra) is well preserved; it had a tower on each side, now greatly reduced in height, in which are small windows with arched heads moulded in one slab of terra-cotta. ”

“ To this period also belongs the massive rampart, over 10 ft. thick, and the north gateway, one of the most perfect Roman gateways in Great Britain. After the departure of the Romans the walls became ruinous or were partly pulled down, perhaps by sea rovers from the north. ”

“ The Outer Ward.—The gatehouse has been much altered and mutilated. In front it presents the appearance of a gateway, with a low-pointed arch, in a curtain about 6 feet thick and 35 feet high, of which the merlons are pierced by plain loops. On each side the gate is a flanking wall, 3 feet thick, and projecting 8 feet, which, no doubt, covered the drawbridge. The arch looks Decorated, as is probably the curtain, though the battlements are probably modern. The ditch has been filled up, and large trees grow along its course. ”

“ Driving along a flat and monotonous country road, one comes on the old gate almost suddenly, and experiences a feeling, not of disappointment but of surprise. The gate does not span the road, but is set back a little in a hedge on one side of it, and seems large for its setting. One is prepared for a dark, grimy portal, whereas the soot and smoke of London have been erased from it, and, instead, one sees an antique, creamy-white structure tinted and toned with the green of the great trees which overhang it. ”

“ BROADSTAIRS: YORK GATE
You go down to the harbour past the Droit Office and through the old archway called “York Gate,” built, according to the inscription upon it,163 by George Culmer in 1540, and repaired by Sir George Henniker in 1795. This gateway, it is rather surprising to learn, was built as a defence against the foreign foe. It may, when fitted with its wooden door, “slammed, barred, and bolted,” have detained an enemy for a brief space, but it can never have been a formidable obstacle. ”

“ Proceeding to the details of the Print, we may observe that in our eleventh volume we gave three engravings illustrative of the Castle improvements; one of which represented the gateway named after the late Sovereign, and seen from the Long Walk. The present Engraving is the other side of the gateway, as seen from the interior of the square or quadrangle. This new gate was externally completed in 1826. The natural application of the fine avenue, called the Long Walk, was thus realized. The gateway consists of two towers the York and Lancaster. ”

“ The gates which formerly hung between these piers (Fig. 239) are probably the earliest example of garden gates in wood which survive, but they are so unconstructional in design that they threatened to fall to pieces, and were replaced by something plainer, but more convenient. Among the drawings by Jones and Webb are many of gateways, some rich in appearance, and some quite plain. The finest which remains is the well-known York water-gate at the foot of Buckingham Street (Fig. 35) . ”

“ Slopping along in a cab through the muddy streets, as I went under the (p. 187) portico of Euston Station I was forcefully reminded of one of the big gates of Pekin. There is a suggestion of the same massiveness; but the massiveness is only make-face, like the painted cannon on a Chinese city gate. It was an imposing portico to a shamble of sheds.
The railway terminus is the real gate of the modern city.
Yet what absurdly incongruous things these London city gates are—a salad jumble of architecture and machinery with a mayonnaise of train-oil and soot! ”

“ Seen at this distance, I know of nothing more grand and stupendous than that great mountain gate or pass, a great cleft or sinus in the blue banks, as in a dark evening cloud, fit portal to lead from one country, from one quarter of the world to another, where the children of Israel might file through. Little does the New Hampshire farmer who drives over that road realize through what a sublime gap he is passing. ”

“ All the large houses of the early eighteenth century, and many of [329] the small ones, had noteworthy gates and gate-piers. There are hundreds of examples up and down the country, and that at Burley-on-the-Hill, near Oakham (Fig. 245) , is typical of the larger kind. This treatment, with lofty stone piers and iron gates of more or less elaborate design, is more frequent than that adopted at Ince Blundell Hall, in Lancashire, where an archway forms the main entrance, and is flanked on each side by a length of wall containing gates for foot traffic (Fig. 246) . ”

“ She went up to them very closely, for she was curious to see the place through which she had come in her sleep, as a traveller goes back to see the city gate, with its bridge and portcullis, through which he has passed by night. The gate was very great, of a wonderful, curious architecture, and strange, delicate arches and canopies above. ”

“ An Edwardian gatehouse is a very imposing structure. It was usually rectangular in plan, always flanked in front by two drum towers, and sometimes in the rear by two others containing well-staircases. In its centre was the portal arch opening into a long straight passage traversing the building. Three loops in each flanking tower commanded the bridge of approach, raked the lateral curtain, and covered a point immediately outside the gate. ”

“ The walls are castellated at top, and vary in height, according to the nature of the ground, from twenty to thirty feet. There are also, as in other places, four principal gates, having each an outwork or outer wall, with a court or open space between them, and a second gate leading from this, and placed at right angles to the inner one, so that the approach to it from the outside is commanded by the principal wall of the town. ”

“ A passage, at the ground level, leads from the platform through the gatehouse tower, across the ditch or canal from the water gate, to the northern curtain, and was defended by gates, portcullis, and drawbridge.
From the gatehouse a dividing wall, 20 feet high and 6 feet thick, extends westward 80 feet to the edge of the inner moat, and thus cuts off the platform and the whole of the southern from the northern curtain. Each face has been embattled, so that should either curtain be taken, the other could still be defended. ”

“ Word flew round that 'the foreign troops are at the city wall and are shelling the East Gate.' At daylight most of us went on to the wall, and witnessed the shelling of the Great East Gate. We knew that the allies would advance in separate columns, and were on the qui vive of excitement, knowing that at any moment now the troops might arrive. Luncheon, the hard luncheon of horse flesh, came on, and we had just finished when the cry rang through the Legation, 'The British are coming,' and there was a rush to the entrance and up Canal-street towards the Water Gate. ”

“ Stretching from South Park to Black Point, and running back to the Mission Dolores and the Presidio, we are building up a metropolis, sir, worthy to be placed beside the Golden Gate that opens to the broad Pacific and the shores of far Cathay! When the Pacific Railroad is built we shall be the natural terminus of the Pathway of Nations! ”

“ At the table-d’hôte, along with a bottle of the delicate Theirgärtner, the head waiter hands us a folded paper having on the one side a plan of Trêves, an engraving of the Red House, and a list of trains; on the other, a panorama of the Moselle from Trêves to Coblenz, with representations of eight of the principal lions of Trêves. The post of honour among these belongs to the Porta Nigra. This splendid old Roman gate is built of red sandstone, which has become of so dark a colour by age as to justify the name of the Black Gate, especially as contrasted with the light buildings around. ”

“ Over the bridge was a big gate, as white as ivory, which was fitted into a gap in the boundary hedge. The gate opened outwards, and I exclaimed in amazement, for from it ran a road—just such a road as I had left—dusty under foot, with brown crackling hedges on either side as far as the eye could reach.
"That's my road!" I cried.
He shut the gate and said: "But not your part of the road. It is through this gate that humanity went out countless ages ago, when it was first seized with the desire to walk." ”

“ It is a most worshipful Gateway: strong and tall and massive, so that one cannot, in naming it, do else than give it a capital G. There is scarce a more impressive Gateway in England. It was built somewhere about 1290, in the reign of Edward the First, as the architecture of its great drum-towers shows, and was the last word in massive fortification of that time: the walls ten feet thick and fifty-three feet high, the gloomy entrance arch ribbed with immense ribs of stone, the outer face of the towers relieved only by narrow slits for arrows. ”

“ On the way back both wind and tide were against us and the crossing took much longer. We passed beyond the greater part of the town, having it upon our left, and landed at a little half-moon battery which projected into the East River near what was called the Water Gate. This gate was the eastern entrance to the city through the Wall, a line of palisades backed by a ditch that extended quite across the city from the East River to the Hudson. ”

“ When this gateway was opened out, a rough wall presented itself, which from the inferiority of its masonry, had evidently been the work of ruder hands than those employed upon the wall of the station, making it evident that the gateway had been built up long after the Roman occupation, and suggesting the idea that the camp may have been appropriated as a stronghold in the subsequent days of border warfare. This wall has been removed, and the gate, the opening of which between the pillars is eleven feet two inches, clearly exposed. ”

“ Every summer, every autumn, sees large numbers of touring automobiles on the way to Scotland and the moors, filled with those who prefer the road, on such terms, to the railway. From being something in the nature of a lonely highway, the Great North Road has thus become a very much travelled one. ”